Now Momena stabs fellow prisoner

Momena Shoma, Bangladesh student serving a decades-long jail sentence in Australia for stabbing her local host has been charged with engaging in a terrorist act in prison.

She has been serving a 42-year prison sentence in Melbourne's Dame Phyllis Frost women's prison, reports The Australian.

Federal police charged the 27-year-old on Wednesday over a stabbing at the Ravenhall jail on October 30.

She faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday on a single charge of engaging in a terrorist act.

The 27-year-old sat stock-still and stared straight ahead during her appearance over videolink in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday according to local media.

A 27-year-old woman was taken to hospital with an injury to her hand, police said.

Magistrate Carolyn Burnside said it could be more than a year before the matter reached trial due to delays caused by Covid-19.

Prosecutors have until February next year to put together their evidence against Shoma.

Shoma’s lawyer Crystle Gomez Vasquez told the court the prisoner was only two years into her 42-year sentence.

The 150cm-tall woman nicknamed the “tiny terrorist” was convicted in June 2019 for stabbing her landlord in front of his five-year-old daughter in February 2018.

The Islamic State devotee shouted “Allahu Akbar” – meaning God is great – while she stabbed her local landlord.

Judge Lesley Taylor said when sentencing the Bangladesh native that her sole purpose of coming to Australia was to carry out an attack that would “trigger the West” and make her a martyr.

Prosecutors said Shoma became radicalised in 2013 while living in Dhaka and became enamoured of the ISIS and its calls for Muslims to engage in violent jihad against non-Muslims.

After failed attempts to study in Turkey -- with the aim of crossing into ISIS-controlled parts of Syria -- prosecutors said Shoma received a scholarship to study at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and arrived in the city on February 1, 2018.